Tuesday, February 05, 2013

ABC Wednesday

One of my favourite flowers. I have grown them in every garden I have ever had.

Delphiniums are an alkaline loving perennial,

popular in cottage type gardens where their beautiful showy spikes tower in gorgeous shades of blue, pink, white and purple.

They are fond of moist cool summers and definitely need to be staked early in the season if they are going to be exposed to sudden wind or rain.

Difficult to grow from seed, they should be purchased in a pot, unless, of course, you have a friendly neighbour who is willing to part with a crown. Dig a hole twice the diameter of the plant’s container, and be sure that the top of the root ball is level with the soil.

After the first blooming in June cut the flower stalks to the ground and new flower stalks will develop so that you can enjoy Delphinium in October, although they won't be as spectacular as the June flowers – but just as precious as you go into winter.

Very young delphinium plants and delphinium seeds are poisonous, and can cause nausea, twitching muscles, paralysis and even death, so please don’t consider them a delicacy.

15 comments:

What a genius idea to use the alphabet to display such lovely things as flowers. My delphiniums come from chromes from my great great grandmother. I have had them for nearly 40 yrs. and am most proud of them. How often if at all, do you divide them? Yours are lovely as well. Looking foreward to 'E.'Blessings

I love deliphiniums. I started some from seeds and they came by every year for about five years. I let them go to seed and had good luck with them coming back until I spent less time weeding and ended up with a wild garden. They couldn't compete with other self seeders and at this point the area where I had delphiniums is overrun with honeysuckle. Your shot reminded me of how much I miss them. Carver, ABC Wed. Team

I remember seeing delphiniums in England, but I remember them best from a Christopher Robin book "When We were very Young". There was a poem in that book that began: "Delphiniums red; delphiniums blue..." but sadly I don't remember any more of it.

I thought at once of the AA Milne poem too, as did your commenter above. Sadly too much of my brain is still filled with Christopher Robin poems. This one is called 'the dormouse and the doctor' and this is the first verse:

There once was a Dormouse who lived in a bedOf delphiniums (blue) and geraniums (red),And all the day long he’d a wonderful viewOf geraniums (red) and delphiniums (blue).

Vancouver and the Depression Years
-
September 17th, 2012
The Depression years of the 1930's have been documented in many places, so
it is not necessary to repeat all of its ramifications now,...

4 years ago

The rose, the rose

O, gather me the rose, the rose,

While yet in flower we find it,

For summer smiles, but summer goes,

And winter waits behind it!

For with the dream foregone, foregone,

The deed forborne for ever,

The worm, regret, will canker on,

And time will turn him never.

So well it were to love, my love,

And cheat of any laughter

The death beneath us and above,

The dark before and after.

The myrtle and the rose, the rose,

The sunshine and the swallow,

The dream that comes, the wish that goes,

The memories that follow!

William Henley

If I were to wish for anything

I should not wish for wealth and power,

but for the passionate sense of the potential.

For the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Kierkegaard

We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers our actions run as causes, and return to us as results.

Herman Melville

Prosperity is not without many fears and disasters; and adversity is not without comforts and hopes.

Francis Bacon

Most of us aren't ever going to be rich or famous. Presumably, we have made our peace with that reality also, and have set ourselves to discovering what it is that we will do with the gifts God has given us. A joyful life is, quite simply, a life that has found that path. A life that knows why it is here. A life that knows what is worth everything and what is worth nothing at all.

Barbara Crafton

The perfection of wisdom, and the end of true philosophy is to proportion our wants to our possessions, our ambitions to our capacities, we will then be a happy and a virtuous people.

Mark Twain

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.

About Me

We lived at the back of our son's horse pasture and had a wonderful view of the Similkameen Valley. Then we
moved to town, and although we still lived in the same beautiful valley we saw it from a different perspective, and sometimes telephone wires get in the way.
Hildred writes Daybyday,
Charles wrote From the Back Pasture. He was writing at great urging from the family to record some of the stories of his life and his family memories.
We had reached the point in our lives where we had time to appreciate the beauty of each day and were happy we had the energy to enjoy it. In 2012 we celebrated our 67th wedding anniversary, but then I lost my darling husband when he fell and broke his hip, and did not recover from the resulting surgery. Life has changed for me considerably......
Off to the side - a Garden Diary to keep track of what happens Down the Garden Path.
And a Recollection Blog, to keep alive the memories of our families.